So, my little darlings, i finally have a small amount of time to write another chapter :D

This time around I had fun with my style... a lot of fun... and I like the result so much, that I will probably keep this "new style" in the future.

Anyways, I drew my OC "Paladin Lithrdir Asharrow Fireforge." But most of the people that have heard of him, should recognize him under the nickname "Drug Junkie." Why? Well, because he's an addict and the drug-dealer inside the HQ... which is mainly important when he sells drugs to Cevrond after Ruindîrs 5th death (the first death Cev thought was a death).

So here's a cool song I found whilst drawing this on the side:

https://youtu.be/TxT8OMv8h44

Man.... I really wanna attempt to share more music with you guys in here, but I keep forgetting...

But without further ado, let's get to the drawing, eh?

So I started with my beloved guidelines. Very rough, very sketchy ... >>has to giggle<< ... and in the end we ended up with this thing. The problem? I didn't know what to do with his arm. And then I remembered something very crucial about him... he... he only has one of those...

So instead of figuring out the second (and his only) arm, I just left the sketch as is and decided to just wing the arms as soon as I get to the lineart, (which worked surprisingly well, to be honest...)

So keeping that in mind, I started to line the face.... oh boy was I hyped for this part, and oh boy did it turn out better than I though it would. I mean.... just look at this dude:

And this is where the style experiment comes in. You see, in 2020 I wanted to go more stylised, since I can be way more expressive that way.... except that I struggled so much with it, that I could express shit at the end of it.

So now I wanna go a bit more realistic, which most certainly doesn't mean that the length of my necks go more realistic.... I will continue to draw my giraffe-people, don't you worry ^-^

Welp, back to the actual drawing. I did the face and then thought "what now?" since I haven't figured out his clothing yet... which was stupid to do, since... yeah. I wanna draw the clothing. At least the torso-part of it...

So I sat down with my base and did these ugly sketches. I already had rough colours in mind, so I didn't bother wasting time on colours. All these outfits are indeed part of his wardrobe, but since I never drew them, I had to see them properly in front of me, and not in my mind for once.

The main issue here was, that Lithrdir is a character of mine, that I am indeed familiar with, but I haven't satten down and viewed the world from his eyes for longer than three hours in one go, so his clothing style was fairly hard to capture. Especially since he's typically fireforgean, but can't wear fireforgean attire, since the climate in the Angelwing-clan is a lot colder and the culture there is vastly different.

So yeah. I struggled more with this than I thought I would but I did it:

Now after deciding to draw him in the middle-outfit I started with my clean sketch on top. The aim for this drawing was, to speed up my drawing process in a way, that enables me to draw half-body figures with clothing and some light shading, without needing to struggle for hours on end. This should be my first attempt in my flat-colour-replacement-program, that I already talked about in my Artblog (>>cough cough<< click somewhere on this bracket to get the account where I host it on >>cough cough<<) .

So yeah... here's the progress of that:

After that I then went on and drew the arms and his sword, that he always uses as an arm-rest. The sword itself is just there for status and symbolism.... he's actually an offensive archer, which is also why his nicknames include "Buster", but retired after loosing his arm and having some issues with a prosthetic. I also decided to flip the image, since I realised that I have been working on a flipped canvas the entire time and didn't want to switch his features around.... yeah...

Welp, after all that was done, I can now finally present to you the finished "lineart" ^-^

Ah. Have I fangirled about how he's one of my not-stick-figure characters? And the first one of those that I drew halfbody?? I don't know, but anyways I AM HAPPY, BECAUSE IT TURNED OUT GREAT.

Welp, colouring was up next. Goal was to keep the shading minimal. As in... you can see shading and the general form of things, but it's not properly rendered, you know? As an alternative for my good old flat colours, I limited myself to two shading layers and one highlight layer for each element, which turned out to be a great practise in setting priorities on his features and so on ^-^

But for now, here's a WIP from the flatting in process >w<

The fun thing with Lithrdir is, that he's also a fireforge like Ruindîr, but didn't grow up noble. Rather the opposite, since his father was an unknown soldier passing through town and his mother was a prostitute. So he's totally into showing his status, as his achievements portray everything he has dreamed of in life.
Anyways, so we had quite some golden details all around his clothing. He's also from western Fireforge, which is known to have a more darker colour scheme, deriving of the dark clan colours of the former clan there. (Fireforge is inofficially divided in east in west, since the west used to be the Starsing-Clan (devoted to Locatros, god of space) and the east used to be the Ashhammer-Clan (devoted to the goddess of fire)). So whilst the main colour is still orange, the west pairs it more with deep reds and blacks, whilst the east goes more with muted browns and yellows.
>>throws finished flats in the chapter<<

Okay. So then I went around and shaded everything, also realising, that I forgot his tattoos. I mean... he's a holy guardian, so he has most certainly attained a degree of nobility to get some tattoos.

Oh.... btw..... I guess I never said anything about the meaning of the glowing tattoos, did I? Ima just insert that here then, because I can and don't have another WIP before the finished piece >w<"

So.... the glowing tattoos are a special thing with different meanings in different cultures. Through the clanisation in the south (... just imagine globalisation, but limited to one continent...) the original meaning of them faded away and got replaced by the conception, that... well the more intricate, complex and spread out the tattoos you have are, the higher is your social status. So the holy guardians have simply tattoos, around their eyes and nosebridges (e.g. Cevrond here:)

Whilst royalties have tattoos all over their body... (as you can maybe see over here with Ruindîr: (even though I have reworked his facial tatts quite some time ago >w<"))

It's also very interesting to draw the tattoos, since they always reflect the clans element. So the Fireforgean-tattoos all resemble fire, the sun, ancient geometric runes found in desert temples, etc. or the Shadowdance-tattoos all try to resemble abstracts swirly shapes, stars, shadows and smoke, as can be seen on this OC of mine, who's name I forgot:

So yeah... tatts are fun. I hope you didn't mind that little detour of mine, I do those quite often ^-^"

Overall... a lot of fun, also really relaxing to not put that much effort in the shading, and still trying to make it look a bit polished. Here's the end result:

Also, here's a closeup of the face, because I can:

So that was that. As I said: A style experiment that went extremely successful, so I will attempt to stick to this more realistic style for most of my drawings. Obviously I will always go back to my more cartoony stuff for... probably comics or smaller doodles when I don't have that much time I guess...

So what do you think about him? Any open questions about the drawing or his character?
I'd obviously love to read your feedback ^-^

Until we see each other next time then..
>>climbs up ladder to join Mith in the Treehouse<<
>>throws biscuits and blankets down to everyone<<
... I'd be extremely happy if you stuck around and had a good time :D